author
Nella Braddy Henney
1894–1973
An editor turned biographer, she became a close friend of Helen Keller and wrote the first published biography of Anne Sullivan. Her work helped bring the story behind Keller’s famous teacher to a wide audience.
0 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Leslie, Georgia, on November 28, 1894, Nella Braddy Henney studied at Wesleyan College and earned her bachelor’s degree from Converse College in 1915 before doing graduate work at Columbia University. From 1919 to 1938 she worked at Doubleday, editing books, encyclopedias, and anthologies.
A major turning point came in 1923, when she was assigned to work with Helen Keller on an updated edition of The Story of My Life. She learned the manual alphabet so she could communicate directly with Keller, and the friendship that followed shaped much of her best-known work. In 1933 she published Anne Sullivan Macy: The Story Behind Helen Keller, described in archival records as the first published biography of Anne Sullivan.
Henney married photographer Keith Henney in 1926, and together they remained closely connected to Keller’s circle for many years. Later records note that in the late 1950s she introduced Keller and Polly Thomson to William Gibson while he was developing The Miracle Worker, linking her once again to one of the most enduring stories in American literary and cultural history.